How will Nazareth's Sage Karam fare in IndyCar Series opener with broken wrist?

Jonathan Ferrey, Getty Images

Jonathan Ferrey, Getty Images

Paul ReinhardSpecial to The Morning Call

How can Sage Karam drive an Indy car with a broken wrist?

If Sage Karam had any illusion that being able to improve 22 positions to finish ninth in the 2014 Indianapolis 500 meant the transition between Indy Lights and the Verizon IndyCar Series would be an easy one, he found out otherwise 12 days ago. The hard way.

While testing his GE-LED Honda-powered race car at Barber Motorsports Park in Alabama, Karam, the 2013 Firestone Indy Lights champion and a 2014 Nazareth Area High School graduate, headed into a fast right-hand Turn 14. The car bottomed out. Out of control, it turned left and slammed head-first into a guard rail at about 140 mph.

The Chip Ganassi Racing Teams car suffered major damage. Karam, who alertly got his hands off the steering wheel, only to get his right hand caught up in it again upon impact, came away with a right wrist that he said Thursday was "torn up pretty good … broken into five pieces."

But on Saturday, when the IndyCar Series conducts practice and qualifying for its first race of the 2015 season, the Firestone Grand Prix of St. Petersburg, Karam will be in the cockpit for his official non-Indianapolis debut.

"It's going to hurt this weekend," said Karam, who added that the biggest problem will be on right-hand turns, and the St. Pete street course has 11 of them out of the 14 corners on the 1.8-mile circuit.

"I have to tough it out. That's where the inner wrestler in me is going to have to come out for the first few races."

Karam has been under contract with Ganassi Racing as a developmental driver since last year. The Ganassi connection helped him get into a Dreyer & Reinbold Racing car for the Indy 500, where he made a strong showing for rookie of the year, only to be beaten out by NASCAR regular Kurt Busch.

St. Pete may be the first Indy-car race of this season for Karam, but it won't be his last.

"I think you'll be seeing more of me on the grid, especially [in the] first part of the season," he said. "Then, if things go well in the races I race, the rest will fall in place and a full season will happen. I have to keep crash damage to a minimum and the results to a good rate … do my job."

With the big picture in view, and the injury hampering some of the things he would probably like to do under normal conditions, Karam said the goal for the St. Pete event is to finish. "I don't want to be wrecking any more, especially with the injury because there's a risk of getting hurt worse. Keep my nose clean and bring it home in one piece is definitely the goal.

"Anything above that keeps adding to the pot. I'd like to get a top 10; I think we can be top 10 if we have a good qualifying. I'd like to make the Fast Six in qualifying, but I know how difficult that is with the competition there is in the series. We'll see how it goes."

Karam has not had a lot of seat time in the new car with its 2015 Aero package. He was supposed to have six test days, but the car reconstruction after the crash at Barber took away four of those.

The CGRT crew got the car back together in time to give Karam a chance to get into it earlier this week at NOLA Motorsports Park in New Orleans. He made only 10 laps, however, "just to get a feel for it again."

So, it's a good thing for him that the season opener is at a place like St. Pete, which Karam said, "has been good to me. I love the track."

In 2010, when he was only 15, he won a race at St. Pete in the USF 2000 series en route to winning the season championship while driving for Andretti Autosport. In 2013, when he was on the podium in nine of the 12 races while winning the Indy Lights title for Schmidt Peterson Motorsports, he wound up third at St. Pete.

The full-blown Indy car is a different animal from the Indy Lights car.

"It's a whole other level of driving," Karam said. "You have to step up everything from the tech side to your all-out ability to go fast."

So, what have a couple of days in the car taught Sage?

"I'm learning that even though you think you're at the limit and you're pushing really hard and you think you're going super fast, there's always still more and more you can push and go quicker," he said. "That's where I'm slower. [Scott] Dixon is a couple tenths of a second faster than me every lap because he knows the absolute limit of the car. Every day I get closer and closer and I'm starting to find it."

The crash at Barber was a bump in the road for him, but there wasn't anything he could do about it.

"It happened so fast; I didn't have time to catch it," Karam said. "I knew I was gonna hit the wall. It was definitely the hardest wreck of my career, but you can't let these things play with your mind. You have to get through them, like any adversity. I can't let it change the confidence I have in my driving."

Karam said practice and qualifying will put a strain on his injured wrist and "I'm going to wake up sore on Sunday morning. But I have to just take it up and go."